Console: Xbox 360/ PlayStation 3
Set ten years after the events of Lost Planet: Extreme Conditions, Lost Planet 2 is Capcoms sequel in the third-person shooter series. Released on both Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 the game was delayed and only got its release on May 11th having originally being planned for release in early 2010. Honestly, they could have done with another six months on the game as the sequel suffers from serious problems.
As said earlier the plot takes place ten years after the original game, returning once more to the planet E.D.N 2I. The harsh ice and snow terrains are melting away and vast jungles and tropical fields are springing up across the planet’s surface. The game is centred around the ongoing battle between various factions, NEVEC, Snow Pirates and many more, for the control over the Thermal Energy or T-ENG. As well fighting amongst each other, the groups must also face down the alien race indigenous to the planet, the Akrid. Unlike the Akrid species in the first game, these bugs are more powerful and swarm in even greater numbers. So very little has changed with the game’s plot overall.
Gameplay is also very similar to the prequel with most of the original elements returning: you still have to take on huge Akrid bugs in boss battles, the harsh and difficult terrain which you must scale and traverse to further the plot as well as the ability to commandeer Vital Units (robotic weaponry units). There is now an even greater variety of Vitals that the player can pilot and in multiplayer it’s even possible for friends to tag along on the side of your robot armour. You now earn experience for completing missions and various extra-curricular achievements, these points can then be used to buy custom costume pieces, altering the overall look of your character. Online mode also makes a return, also dragging some of the original games modes along with it but Lost Planet 2 brings some new modes to the playing field, including the ‘Akrid Egg Hunt’, in other words capture the flag!
In tradition, a sequel is meant to take the best parts of the original and add some brand spanking new features. Lost Planet: 2 couldn’t have gotten this concept anymore wrong. Lost Planet: Extreme Conditions was by no means a perfect game but it was an ok game to play to pass some time. Lost Planet 2 fixes absolutely nothing that was wrong with the first game, in fact it only makes things worse. The menu system is a complete chore to struggle your way through, the training mode confused us so much that we actually had to check online what the actually objective of the training simulation mode was. After then spending sometime customising our female character, (a girl’s got to look her best before she goes out to shoot some bugs) we learned that we couldn’t even use our customised character in offline mode. To combat our frustration we stuck on multiplayer only to be terrified by the strange looking splitscreen before us, it was impossible to use, characters were tiny, a huge chunk of our viewing area was blacked out and someone thought it would be handy to throw in a useless map there just for good measure!
Ok being fair, the graphics and visuals are really enjoyable, the scale and design of the Akrid bugs is fantastic and the detail of the terrain, whether ice or jungle is a feast for the eyes. This is only a short lived moment of joy though because the cut scenes used between chapters are bland and lack any real tension and try as they might the visuals can’t actually rescue them.
Forget six months, they needed another year to make Lost Planet 2 even halfway playable, lets just pray that this is the last in the series!
Rent or Buy: Buy, if you want to be frustrated beyond belief. Rent, if you think you can get a refund!
Gold Stars: 4 out of 10
